Clinic News

The most recent episodes of the popular podcast, ”Undisclosed,” focus on a case that involves the investigative work of Wake Forest University undergraduate and graduate students. On April 23, 2018, the podcast team began airing episodes about Chinquapin, North Carolina, resident Pam Lanier, who was convicted in 1999 of murdering her husband, Dorian, in largely due to an odd …

Professor Mark Rabil, director of Wake Forest School of Law’s Innocence and Justice Clinic, is featured in a new movie, “In Pursuit of Justice,” which is playing as part of Winston-Salem’s anual RiverRun Film Festival and will be shown at 5 p.m. on Friday, April 20, at SECCA and 4 p.m. on Friday, April 28, at Hanesbrand Theatre. …

The Innocence and Justice Clinic and the Criminal Justice Program are co-sponsoring a symposium, “Re-Thinking Drug Policy: Seeking Solutions Based on Law, Science and Public Health,” with the Rethinking Community Program, the Office of the Provost, the Wake Forest University School of Medicine’s Center for Community Engagement , Department of Social Sciences and Health Policy, Center for Research on Substance …

A Forsyth County judge has rejected a guilty plea in a capital case Innocence and Justice Clinic students have been working on for the past two years due to concerns about mental competency of a man accused of stabbing his girlfriend to death in 2014. Professor Mark Rabil, director of the Innocence and Justice Clinic, said Shawn Briggs …

Professor Mark Rabil, director of the Innocence and Justice Program, is featured in the following story, “For Asheville attorney, a life’s work fighting the death penalty,” about Adjunct Professor Kimberly C. Stevens (JD ’92), written by Tonya Maxwell of the Asheville Citizen-Times, which was also published in USA Today on Jan. 2, 2017. An excerpt …

Recent Items

Professor Mark Rabil, the director of Wake Forest Law’s Innocence Clinic, said he started teaching the Steven Avery murder case years before the “Making a Murderer” documentary came out. He shares his thoughts on what the popular series shows with WXII’s Briana Conner. Watch the video.

Professor Rabil has some strong words for legislators considering to repeal North Carolina’s landmark Racial Justice Act. Speaking to Star News, Professor Rabil had this to say: “Can the legislature legally retroactively repeal a law that people have already filed claims under? Generally speaking, I think the answer is going to be no, but that …

On April 3, 2013, Brian Banks signed with the Atlanta Falcons and is now a part of their 90 man roster. Right now you may be asking yourself, why do I care, and how could I make this happen to me? But there’s a lot more to this story. in 2002, Brian Banks was …

These three young boys were found brutally murdered. When police speculated about the assailant, the juvenile probation officer assisting at the scene said a local teenager, Damien Echols, was “capable” of committing the murders, stating “it looks like Damien Echols finally killed someone.” That was pretty much all it took. The small town West …

Part of human nature is the propensity to ignore long-term consequences in order to deal with short-term problems. Americans are no exception to this instinct, in fact, we are outliers. Modern America has cultivated and refined the primal drive for instant gratification, weaving it directly into the DNA of our culture. As a result, our …

A lot of people may feel like David Gavitt should have died with his family, but that doesn’t mean he killed them. Source: http://www.lawtimesnews.com/201302259629/Headline-News/Prof-touts-happy-ending-to-the-saddest-case-I-know

Bradley Manning waited over 1,000 days in jail before his recent plea in which he admitted being the source behind hundreds of thousands of documents released to Wikileaks, but contested that his actions “aided the enemy”. The Verge.com has an in-depth series on the Manning case, and most-distressingly it exposes the federal government’s increasing use of …

Here is a recent column by Darryl Hunt on the Racial Justice Act, which legislators are threatening to repeal: http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/article_7a61ba26-6ffe-11e2-b7dc-0019bb30f31a.html

(ATLANTA, GA; September 20, 2011) Today the Innocence Network and the Innocence Project submitted a letter to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles urging the board to reconsider its decision denying clemency to Troy Davis who is scheduled to be executed tomorrow. The letter urges the Board to stay Davis’ execution so that it …

Prosecutors across the state have mounted an effort to block defendants who plead guilty from appealing to the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, a state agency that examines claims that a prisoner may have been wrongly convicted. “Continue reading”